Google parent company Alphabet posted a strong set of results for Q2 2018 yesterday. Revenues were 26 per cent up on Q2 2017 at $32.7bn (£24.9bn), and also up on Q1 2018’s figure of $31.2bn. 86 per cent of these came form advertising, the remainder from other services, including hardware and cloud services.

The company reported an operating income of $2.8bn, despite including in the results the €4.3bn ($5.1bn) fine levied against it by the European Commission last week in relation to its Android operating system. Without provision for the fine, which Google is appealing, its operating income would have been $7.9bn.

“We delivered another quarter of very strong performance, with revenues of $32.7 billion, up 26 per cent versus the second quarter of 2017 and 23 per cent on a constant currency basis,” said Alphabet and Google CFO, said Ruth Porat. “Our investments are driving great experiences for users, strong results for advertisers, and new business opportunities for Google and Alphabet.”

Commenting on the results, Ruth Manielevitch, director of business development EMEA at Taptica, said: “Alphabet’s latest results show the parent company of Google maintaining its growth this quarter, with revenue lifting to $32.7bn, beating analyst predictions. This increase is driven by Googles search advertising business, which has accounted for 70 per cent of Alphabet’s net revenues in the past few years. Despite the recent setbacks, which have been hard to ignore, Google is still very much a heavyweight in the mobile and advertising spaces, dominating over a third of the global advertising market. This next quarter, we expect the business to remain strong with its advertising offering, and expect there will be continued growth.”

And Wajid Ali, head of paid search at Forward3D, said the results showed the continued growth of a healthy paid search market.

“The introduction of new measurement tools – along with the seeding of machine learning across their user targeting – has allowed brands to reach potential consumers with even more accuracy,” said Ali. “However, the sheer size of Google seems to have bought it under more scrutiny recently, with the EU only last week handing out a record-breaking fine to the company for their means of distribution of their mobile OS, Android, which has been largely responsible for the companys successful transition to mobile search. That said, we cant see their growth trajectory go anywhere but upwards over the next few years.”